It could not have been far from midnight when I came beneath Hollingsworth's window, and, finding it open, flung in a tuft of grass with earth at the roots, and heard it fall upon the floor.He was either awake or sleeping very lightly; for scarcely a moment had gone by before he looked out and discerned me standing in the moonlight.
"Is it you, Coverdale?" he asked."What is the matter?""Come down to me, Hollingsworth!" I answered."I am anxious to speak with you."The strange tone of my own voice startled me, and him, probably, no less.
He lost no time, and soon issued from the house-door, with his dress half arranged.
"Again, what is the matter?" he asked impatiently.
"Have you seen Zenobia," said I, "since you parted from her at Eliot's pulpit?""No," answered Hollingsworth; "nor did I expect it."His voice was deep, but had a tremor in it, Hardly had he spoken, when Silas Foster thrust his head, done up in a cotton handkerchief, out of another window, and took what he called as it literally was--a squint at us.
"Well, folks, what are ye about here?" he demanded."Aha! are you there, Miles Coverdale? You have been turning night into day since you left us, I reckon; and so you find it quite natural to come prowling about the house at this time o' night, frightening my old woman out of her wits, and making her disturb a tired man out of his best nap.In with you, you vagabond, and to bed!""Dress yourself quickly, Foster," said I."We want your assistance."I could not, for the life of me, keep that strange tone out of my voice.
Silas Foster, obtuse as were his sensibilities, seemed to feel the ghastly earnestness that was conveyed in it as well as Hollingsworth did.
He immediately withdrew his head, and I heard him yawning, muttering to his wife, and again yawning heavily, while he hurried on his clothes.
Meanwhile I showed Hollingsworth a delicate handkerchief, marked with a well-known cipher, and told where I had found it, and other circumstances, which had filled me with a suspicion so terrible that I left him, if he dared, to shape it out for himself.By the time my brief explanation was finished, we were joined by Silas Foster in his blue woollen frock.
"Well, boys," cried he peevishly, "what is to pay now?""Tell him, Hollingsworth," said I.
Hollingsworth shivered perceptibly, and drew in a hard breath betwixt his teeth.He steadied himself, however, and, looking the matter more firmly in the face than I had done, explained to Foster my suspicions, and the grounds of them, with a distinctness from which, in spite of my utmost efforts, my words had swerved aside.The tough-nerved yeoman, in his comment, put a finish on the business, and brought out the hideous idea in its full terror, as if he were removing the napkin from the face of a corpse.
"And so you think she's drowned herself?" he cried.I turned away my face.
"What on earth should the young woman do that for?" exclaimed Silas, his eyes half out of his head with mere surprise."Why, she has more means than she can use or waste, and lacks nothing to make her comfortable, but a husband, and that's an article she could have, any day.There's some mistake about this, I tell you!""Come," said I, shuddering; "let us go and ascertain the truth.""Well, well," answered Silas Foster; "just as you say.We'll take the long pole, with the hook at the end, that serves to get the bucket out of the draw-well when the rope is broken.With that, and a couple of long-handled hay-rakes, I'll answer for finding her, if she's anywhere to be found.Strange enough! Zenobia drown herself! No, no; I don't believe it.She had too much sense, and too much means, and enjoyed life a great deal too well."When our few preparations were completed, we hastened, by a shorter than the customary route, through fields and pastures, and across a portion of the meadow, to the particular spot on the river-bank which I had paused to contemplate in the course of my afternoon's ramble.A nameless presentiment had again drawn me thither, after leaving Eliot's pulpit.Ishowed my companions where I had found the handkerchief, and pointed to two or three footsteps, impressed into the clayey margin, and tending towards the water.Beneath its shallow verge, among the water-weeds, there were further traces, as yet unobliterated by the sluggish current, which was there almost at a standstill.Silas Foster thrust his face down close to these footsteps, and picked up a shoe that had escaped my observation, being half imbedded in the mud.
"There's a kid shoe that never was made on a Yankee last," observed he.
"I know enough of shoemaker's craft to tell that.French manufacture;and see what a high instep! and how evenly she trod in it! There never was a woman that stept handsomer in her shoes than Zenobia did.Here,"he added, addressing Hollingsworth, "would you like to keep the shoe?"Hollingsworth started back.
"Give it to me, Foster," said I.
I dabbled it in the water, to rinse off the mud, and have kept it ever since.Not far from this spot lay an old, leaky punt, drawn up on the oozy river-side, and generally half full of water.It served the angler to go in quest of pickerel, or the sportsman to pick up his wild ducks.
Setting this crazy bark afloat, I seated myself in the stern with the paddle, while Hollingsworth sat in the bows with the hooked pole, and Silas Foster amidships with a hay-rake.
"It puts me in mind of my young days," remarked Silas, "when I used to steal out of bed to go bobbing for hornpouts and eels.Heigh-ho!--well, life and death together make sad work for us all! Then I was a boy, bobbing for fish; and now I am getting to be an old fellow, and here I be, groping for a dead body! I tell you what, lads; if I thought anything had really happened to Zenobia, I should feel kind o' sorrowful.""I wish, at least, you would hold your tongue," muttered I.
